Um, okay. Boy, how out of the loop we must be – we weren’t even waiting around for an invitation. Wouldn’t we have been embarrassed, show up at the velvet rope and have to walk through the line back to the street.

The streaming music startup now lets anyone register, according to industry observer Mike Butcher, but for reasons known only to God and the French “they’ll allow you to register only by verifying your phone number first.”

The company is letting any old homme off la rue walk in now because, Butcher reported “now they are sure they can ‘maintain the quality of service for many users’.”

The service seems to be “on its way to rolling out across Europe,” Butcher said, adding that he has reservations how successful it will be if it tries to crack the American market, but at least it’s winnowing the field.

“The news is going to come as body-blow to its main French competitor, Deezer, which has been going through all sorts of problems lately,” he added.

Spotify Premium, according to a translated statement from Spotify officials, provides “music on your mobile, even without Internet connection, anywhere in the world, with better sound quality and uninterrupted for €9,99 per month.”

Industry observer Gareth Beavis, who’s heard that joke already, reported that in recent statements CEO Kevin Russell of Three “highlighted the importance of Spotify, which was debuted as a mobile application on the 3 network with the launch of the Hero, promising ‘half a dozen more [Spotify] handset in the next few months’.”

Also, industry observer Barb Dybwad reported recently from the New Music Seminar in Los Angeles, where Spotify CEO and Co-founder Daniel Ek “just gave a keynote about the state of the music industry and his company’s approach to generating revenue for artists in the age of peer-to-peer file-sharing.”

Unfortunately there were no major announcements surrounding the question on everyone’s mind, “When will Spotify launch in the U.S.?,” Dybwad said.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.